Story and Illustrations by Loucas Raptis Last winter I convinced myself that I was in desperate need of a double-handed rod. The truth of the matter is, of course, that I simply wanted one and had to produce the arguments to justify the expense. The purchase of a new rod is something of a poor compromise without the purchase of a matching new reel. Furthermore, in the case of a double-handed rod, a new line is implied without question. And once you’ve gone through all this trouble, a spey line with multiple tips is, of course, the wisest choice. By the time I had finished putting the parts together, I was staring at a price tag that demanded some serious explaining. From my brief exposure to double-handed rods without even having touched one I was convinced that, at least in theory, this was the outfit to address my winter steelhead problem on a river named Cowichan that had me stumped for nearly eight years. If I had indeed nailed the solution, the price would have been a bargain. During the previous summer, as a guest of the Totem Fly Fishers, the oldest fly fishing club in British Columbia, I had watched two of the club’s venerable members, Art Lingren and Pete Broomhall, gracefully swing 15-foot long spey rods and effortlessly fling their lines across the glacial waters of the Dean River. Surprisingly, in a river such as the Dean one does not need to cast long lengths of line. The summer-run steelhead of the river follow the banks quite closely, well within reach of a moderate single-handed cast and knee-deep wading. Nor is there any need to worry about one’s backcast. The river’s expansive gravel bars can be as wide as the river. Under...